CFP: Orient and Orientalisms in American Poetry and Poetics (12/15/06; collection)

We are looking for additional contributors to our book project "Orient andOrientalisms in American Poetry and Poetics", to be published in the series"Transcription: Cultures - Concepts - Controversies," general editor SabineSielke (Frankfurt: Lang, 2007).

American poetry and poetics have repeatedly called upon or taken refuge inso-called Oriental cultures, which include Asian cultures east of theMediterranean as well as African cultures, especially those of Morocco,Algeria, and Egypt. In this way American poetic practice and theory have, onthe one hand, participated in creating dominant notions of 'the Orient.' Weshould remember, on the other hand, that while our contemporaryunderstanding of the terms Orient and Orientalism capitalizes on Westernnotions of cultural dominance over 'the East,' poetic references to andadaptations from Asian cultures became most prominent at ('revolutionary')times when the genre underwent fundamental transformations of its forms andcultural functions, that is during Romanticism, modernism, and earlypostmodernism. In the history of American poetry, Orientalism and modernitythus seem inextricably linked and inseparable from processes of colonizationand modernization as well as decolonization.

This collection of essays seeks to explore the poetics and politics ofAmerican poetry's multiple investments in Oriental cultures and theirparticular aesthetics from Romanticism to contemporary poetics. By tracingnew crossroads of cultures and rediscovering places as foreign as Afroasiathis debate is likely to open up novel perspectives on central moments ofAmerican literary and cultural history.

The book publication is well on its way, but we seek to enlarge its scope.So far, we have assembled essays on the poetic Orientalisms of Emerson,Melville, the Harlem Renaissance, Lowell, contemporary Chinese Americanpoets, and writers dealing with 9/11. We are looking for contributors whoare already working on a related subject and can submit an essay in shorttime, and would contribute additional angles and perspectives. Essays maytake issue with Edward Said's work and can both support or reject itstheses.

For all inquiries, please contact Christian Kloeckner at c.kloeckner_at_gmx.de.

Abstracts of between 250 and 400 words, accompanied by a short CV, should besent to c.kloeckner_at_gmx.de by December 15, 2006.

Notification of acceptance will be sent out by Christmas, and completedpapers will then need to be submitted electronically before January 31st,

2007.

Papers should be submitted in MLA style, 1.5 spaced, 12 pt, Times New Roman,and not exceed 25 pages, including a full bibliography.